Some Attica survivors still seek apology from the state

Sep. 2, 2011
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If you go

-- The Forgotten Victims of Attica will hold a public ceremony at the Attica Correctional Facility at 4 p.m. on Sept. 13. The state will also hold a memorial ceremony at the prison grounds for corrections employees at 5:15 p.m. -- The University of Buffalo Law School is holding a two-day conference about the Attica riot on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13. For information about registration, visit law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/attica40.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo is being urged to issue a state apology to the Attica hostages and their families.

The Forgotten Victims of Attica, a group of hostages and families, had requested an apology in a list of five demands presented to the state in 2002. The state met three demands — restitution, which totaled $12 million for the families; state-funded counseling to those who requested it; and an assurance that the organization could hold a ceremony at the Attica Correctional Facility on Sept. 13 each year.

The state did not open still-sealed records — another demand from the group — and also did not apologize. A report from a state commission that negotiated with the group acknowledged that the hostage families were mistreated by the state in the years after the 1971 riot.

However, the commission declined to apologize, saying it would be a “slippery slope” to issue an apology for actions taken by officials in a different era.

In July, lawyer Malcolm Bell, who was tapped by the state after Attica to prosecute police involved in the retaking, wrote to Cuomo encouraging him to issue an apology by New York state.

Bell highlighted what he said were errors by the state, including then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s refusal to visit the prison during the four-day standoff.

State officials also ignored their own claims that they would “take care of the widows and survivors,” he wrote.

The state issued checks — workers’ compensation payments — without telling the families that accepting the payments would preclude them from lawsuits.

The one widow who refused did successfully sue the state.

“One result was that some hostage widows had to raise their children in or near poverty,” Bell wrote.

Dee Quinn Miller, one of the organizers of Forgotten Victims, said she still hopes an apology will come.

She said the apology is, for her, even more important than the restitution.

“Nobody wants to take responsibility,” said Miller, whose father, William Quinn, was a corrections officer who died from a beating by inmates during the riot.